H is for Halloween Learning Activities!

I am participating in the 31 Days of ABCs hosted by All Done Monkey. Each day a different blogger showcases a craft or activity related to the letter of the day, with a linkup for other bloggers to share their posts for the same letter.

Today I am featuring letter H which is for Halloween Learning Activities! 

This post will be filled with several of our favorite ideas for celebrating Halloween with kids while also embedding a little learning into our activities. Our activities will focus on teaching simple preschool skills like letter names & sounds, number recognition & counting, recognizing and spelling our names, and identifying shapes & colors!

Alphabet Letters

Our favorite way to practice our letter names & sounds during Halloween is to play feed the ghost.

We hang a large ghost cut out in a doorway at our house and then we feed the ghost alphabet letters!

When my kids are younger we just pick up letters, say their names, and toss them into the ghost's mouth. When my kids are older we match an uppercase letter with a lower case letter and then feed them to the ghost together! We also practice saying the letter sounds while the ghost chews up the letters. This game is so much fun! Now that my son is spelling words, I plan to have him make a word, read it out loud, and then feed it to the ghost!

We've also had a lot of fun creating a simple beginning sounds pumpkin patch match game. 

You can find the full tutorial here but basically you add some pumpkins to your pumpkin patch that have Halloween words on them. Then you match them to the pumpkin that has the same beginning sound. For example, I'd match letter g to the pumpkin that says "ghost" on it.

Numbers

My absolute favorite Halloween number game is going on a pumpkin number hunt!!

All you do is hide some numbered cut out pumpkins around your house. Then kids have to go find them and match the number pumpkin cut outs to the pumpkin mat that you can create using a piece of easel paper. I did this today with my preschool class and it required about 5 minutes of prep. They wanted to play it again and again! 

Our pumpkin patch candy math game is another favorite at our house to help us practice number recognition. You can find the full tutorial here. It also requires very little prep ahead of time.

Names

Name Monster puppets are a simple and fun Halloween craft to make while also being really open-ended. These allow for a lot of creativity too! You can find all of the details here.

Our flying ghost name game that we shared earlier this week has also been a hit. It is active and a simple way to practice spelling and recognizing the letters in your child's name. Find the details here.

Shapes

One way to practice shapes during Halloween is to make a Shape Spider. It doesn't really matter what time of the year it is... spiders are always popular at our house. 

A scarecrow shape craft is also an easy way to embed learning while creating. 

Colors

Teaching kids to identify colors and learn color names can be taught all year long but Halloween is an especially fun time because there are so many new sights as kids dress up in costume or go on family or school field trips. 

Our ghost walk game helped kids have fun while learning about colors & shapes.

Making a spooky Halloween wreath together is also a simple way to talk about different colors. We loved looking through our craft supplies to find colorful and varied objects to stick on our wreaths. Go here for the wreath tutorial.

Do you have any favorite Halloween learning activities? If so, come share a link to them in the comments.

Do you have a blog post that teaches kids about the letter H? Come link it up in my H is for.... Link Up below!

31 Days of ABCs Participating Blogs:

This Reading Mama, Nothing if Not Intentional, Sugar Aunts, For the Love of Spanish, Craftulate, Diapers-n-Heels, The Good Long Road, Here come the girls, Toddler Approved, Discovering the World Through My Son's Eyes, Princess And The Rock, Kids Yoga Stories, Frogs & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails, Little Bins for Little Hands, The Measured Mom, P is for Preschooler, 3 Dinosaurs, Preschool Powol Packets, Crayon Box Chronicles, Juggling With Kids, Toddling in the Fast Lane, Teaching Mama, Still Playing School, Mamas Like Me, All Done Monkey, Little Hiccups, LalyMom, What to do with the children, Teachers of Good Things, Stir the Wonder, Scribble Doodle and Draw